Resizing multiple font sizes at once in Keynote

Posted on August 28, 2009 // 0 Comments

Recently I was configuring some slide templates and I found it impossible to resize several font sizes at once. In Keynote, there are placeholders that have multiple levels, most notably the one for the body, which has multiple levels of bullet points by default. These levels each have their own format settings of course, including their font sizes.

Now what if you want the whole thing a bit smaller? Maybe the first three are sized 42/36/30 and you want them to be 36/30/24. What do you do? Well, entering the font size in the combo box in the toolbar doesn’t work. Curiously, the combo box actually shows you several font sizes for the element if you have the entire placeholder selected, but you can only ever enter one font size there and all levels will be set to that size. Same with the Fonts dialog — I like the slider for the font size, but it sets all levels to the same size.

Now, when I was first looking for this a few days back, I didn’t find a solution, so I just replicated my sizes manually in the few places where I needed them. After I was done, I found the real solution, and when I had the same problem again today, I could remember finding the solution, but not what it was. Don’t you hate it when that happens?

Anyway, I remembered it eventually, and here it is: use the keyboard shortcuts or the menu entries from the standard Font menu to do the resizing. Command-+ will increase the sizes (for all levels, but keeping the relative sizing) and Command– decreases them. Cool, eh?